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Comment by danrl | Hacker News Reader

Here in the U.S. west coast mountains some land owners started controlled fires on their property to get rid of the stacking fuel naturally while preserving the bound minerals and helping the large redwoods and sequoias to fend of contenders. I have no idea how they managed to get a permit in this area where officials and population ate crazily scared of these natural processes given that uncontrolled fires make the news every year.

Also, a second generation redwood forest looks very different from an undisturbed one I recently learned from a forest guy who walked with me. He was reading the forest like a book. Very impressive. Turns out, my forest is a second generation and I should maybe take down a few redwoods, something I considered morally wrong before the walkthrough.

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Prescribed burns (intentional, hopefully controlled, fires) are increasingly common in modern forestry and wildfire prevention. They're done in Canada and Australia, and from a quick search, it was brought back into practice in the 1990s in the USA.

Parks Canada has an interesting FAQ about their practices: https://parks.canada.ca/nature/science/conservation/feu-fire...

In South Australia, they're very much monitored and controlled. In the Northern Territory however, it is not uncommon in season to see fires burning beside the highway in a national park, and no one anywhere nearby monitoring them. Well, that is besides birds who hang around to nab fleeing insects and other creatures. Birds have been known to carry burning twigs elsewhere to spread the fire too.

Coming from the former region and visiting the latter, it's quite jarring. But that (now called) mosaic burning has thousands of years of history. You can easily see how it advantaged the early occupants of the area: reduce overall fuel load, flush out animals to hunt, and clear annoying tall, dry grasses which would be miserable to live amongst and walk through.

Prescribed burns are much more common in the southeastern US than in other areas: https://www.wabe.org/why-the-southeast-is-ahead-of-the-west-...

In Western Australia they are a racket. Land is burned for burning's sake as an area of required burning is defined and people rush to hit a quota. Studies are showing that land left untouched for years is actually less flammable than land in the medium turn after burn-off. Additionally, the effects on air quality cannot be discounted either. It is a politicized issue and people are terrified of being seen as not doing anything to combat bushfires that would otherwise threaten homes.

this comment is useful to show how opposed various parties can be.. I have > forty recent, peer reviewed forestry sciencepapers on this topic here in California, where I share them with others who want to educate themselves on the topic.. here we share some characteristics with some parts of Australia regarding wildfires.. in recent years, the severity and scale of some fires have shattered previous records.

The US West Coast lags way behind almost the entire rest of the US w.r.t using controlled burns to limit wildfire danger.

California intentionally burns like only half of the area as Minnesota, despite being like twice as big.

Arkansas, GA, SC, etc all burn like 5-10x what CA does, for prevention purposes.

Growing up outside of the West and moving to the West later, I was shocked how little controlled burns there are here.

My understanding is that California air pollution regulations make it incredibly difficult to burn. The fact that, if you don't do a controlled burn it will result in an much larger uncontrolled burn later is not taken into account by the regulations.

It's a bit more complicated than that: the California Air Resources Board sets statewide rules but the permitting for prescribed burns and the final responsibility for air quality lies with the 35 air districts. They already have the power to ignore many air quality regulations when granting permits but their politics are all over the place and there's tons of locally driven NIMBYism that's more influential than it would be at the state level. In some districts prescribed burns are a lot easier than in others.

CARB has been researching the issue of prescribed burns for decades and ever since the mid to late 2010s is completely on board, but the air districts are slower to follow. On top of that, the difference in land management priorities between the National Forest Service, BLM, and the State of California complicates everything. One of the best arguments for the Federal government divesting of its land in the west is to allow the states to better manage their own resources (states' rights comes full circle).

after the 2018 season, Gov Newsom did oversee a series of comprehensive settlements between major parties regarding cost, authority and procedures. Secondly the long-standing CalFIRE lead was terminated.

Yup - sooner or later mother nature wins. And those larger burns? Instead of being beneficial they actually kill the trees. It's what happened to Yosemite in the 2000's and killed thousands of acres of trees.

You would do well to remember father time is the only one that always wins

> Arkansas, GA, SC, etc all burn like 5-10x what CA does, for prevention purposes.

I live in ATL and just drove back home from being up north for thanksgiving, drove through a huge prescribed burn on the way a few days ago.

People like to blame various west coast states for this, but do note it's mostly federal land, managed by federal employees. East coasters tend to not comprehend how much federal land there is in the southwest/west; watching tourists is fun.

Yea I'm not blaming the state governments because I don't know who's responsible for burns, just pointing out that the end result is the west coast is a tinderbox relative to the rest of the country

> California intentionally burns like only half of the area as Minnesota, despite being like twice as big.

Well the wildfire arsonists take care of the other half.

(I'm serious, not joking. You don't need to do a controlled burn if the wildfire already did one for you.)

> You don't need to do a controlled burn if the wildfire already did one for you.

That seems to get cause and effect backwards. Had California done more controlled burns, then they wouldn't have had nearly as many disastrous wildfires.

California would still have lots of disastrous wildfires regardless of controlled burns, because the chaparral ecosystem is spark-limited, not fuel-limited. Unless you limit your comments to forest ecosystems, which is only half the story, and very little of the urban-wildland interface.

Most of the recent wildfires have been due to arson.

Yet the rapid spread and destruction is often from build up of undergrowth.

Controlled burns is a very old practice. So old, in fact, that Native American tribes have used it for centuries to prevent catastrophic wild fires in North America.

Though they did it for deer and preferred plant habitat I think.

Supposedly. In my readings the evidence is thin on this oft-repeated claim.

The (US) National Park Service disagrees with you, so much so that in some places they hire native elders to help them with controlled burns. They call the practices "cultural burning". They were done for many purposes, over millenia.

See https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-practices-...

> The (US) National Park Service disagrees with you, so much so that in some places they hire native elders to help them with controlled burns. They call the practices "cultural burning".

But that can only be justified by a raw appeal to public relations. No native elder has any relevant experience today.

The small tribes of the northwest might have used fire for clearing land in their immediate area but there is no evidence that they were managing hundreds of thousands of acres of forests in order to reduce large wildfires.

According to the research done by Charles Mann in 1491, the indigenous population used fire to drive prey into hunting zones. I believe he even presents the theory that is what created the grassland plains across the central US. He presents quite a bit of evidence from primary sources.

I’m not a historical scholar and so maybe his evidence is “bunk”, but his work seems to be very well received in academic circles (unlike say Graham Hitchcock who is seen as more of a Malcolm Gladwell type).

I’m surprised a study from before the Colombian exchange is still relevant in ecology.

Most of the area in between the Mississippi and the west coast doesn’t get enough precipitation to support trees. I don’t think that was generally understood until Powell’s survey a couple hundred years later.

Graham Hancock, I think you mean.

Most old growth trees are gone. He gave proof they used controlled burns. Where is the evidence for the claim it's only ""small"" tribes?

There were lots of tribes though, so it probably added up to a humongous area.

Yeah it’s one of those things that kind of sits uncomfortably in the “native Americans were wise nature wizards and we have to unlearn our toxic western industrial capitalist beliefs in order to rediscover their hidden mystical wisdom to save the planet” territory

Like it’s a good story, and it’s true to some degree, but the pageantry around the language people use when treating it is… I dunno it just still sounds like gross Cowboys-and-Indians prose.

Native Americans were wise natural wizards.... but it was the Native American Beavers[1,2] doing the work, not the people.

[1] https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/services/environment/animal...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-beavers-shape...

Very interesting, could you point us to some further reading?

Stephen Pyne has written a few books about this [1] and given talks (this one is very good [2]

[1] https://www.stephenpyne.com/works.htm [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zP7MD2y7T8

Your video [2] does not support the claim that the early Americans did not use prescribed fire. Discussion starts around 50:00.

Well, "had used it for centuries..."

There is very little original "old growth" forest anywhere in the Continental US. It is usually in small parts of hard to log areas like around small streams, soft ground blocking how to remove the logs and certain slopes and hills.

Sometimes those landowners doing prescribed burns don't always do them in the best conditions. The Estrada Fire was near the Santa Cruz Mountains east of Watsonville. I've been to the property several times over the years and it has some beuatiful redwood groves including an albino redwood or two.

Story - https://pajaronian.com/as-cal-fire-makes-progress-on-estrada...

I'm not sure about redwoods, but tropical rainforests take something like 5,000-10,000 years to return to pristine old-growth state.

At least part of that is the climate. A forest in a tropical zone is so efficient at processing nutrients that the soil beneath a forest is almost nutrient-free; the nutrients are always moving from plant to plant. If you take off the forest, what is left is not very hospitable and erodes easily.

Temperate forests accumulate humus; remove the trees and there are nutrients sitting there waiting to foster new growth.

(IANA forestry expert...)

I'd question that definition of "pristine". The old-growth temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, have only existed for about 10-12,000 years; that's about how long it's been since the entire area was covered by an ice sheet.

but as the ice sheet retreated, was that area colonized by species already adapted to temperate rainforest? or did unique speciation occur in situ?

Here's an overview that has a timeline and some jumping off points if you're interested in learning more. What happened as the ice retreated varied by area and some of the valleys in particular have been studied to see what species arrived, in what order, and to investigate delays by some.

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/olym/schalk/cha...

> In comparing the various palynological sources for Northwestern Washington and surrounding regions, it is clear that the vegetation history varies at least in its details from area to area. For example, Heusser (1978:1576) notes that treeless conditions persisted longer after glacial retreat in the Hoh Valley than in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula.

> ...the arrival of coniferous trees in this area was apparently delayed by aridity until sometime between 11,000 and 9,600 yr B.P.

This makes me want to see designated areas for old-growth forests to re-establish, and yet there’s almost no chance that the people living in those areas 2000 years from now will have continuously held the same values and kept the project going.

Plenty of people in California are doing this. Basically they buy a large amount of acreage up where nobody cares (mostly Mendocino county or Humboldt county, but sporadically throughout Sonoma County / Marin County/ rest of the Bay) then spend about a decade putting the land into a trust, and marking each separate trees to make sure people don’t poach them. The largest one is the ‘Save the Redwoods’ league, but I’ve spent many days hiking through redwood preserves just from some random person who died and made a land trust as their legacy.

People 2000 years from now will also be enamored with Redwoods (provided they still exist), they’ve been highly regarded for thousands of years already, and they will for thousands more.

I hope these efforts work out. Interesting approach.

Cynic. I plan to prove you wrong.

Day 1: Trees in backyard are fine. Sent a triumphant note to Odyssey7.

Amazing. Keep me posted!

I’LL SHOW YOU BUDDY

Maybe the Chernobyl exclusion zone will become an old growth forest some day!

The idea of using nuclear waste to protect pristine natural environments is a good one. It's the most effective one we have today. After a few generations I heard animals aren't affected anymore, it also depends on the kind of fallout.

Where did you read that?

The Quetzal and the Macaw: the Story of Costa Rica's rainforests. https://www.amazon.com/Quetzel-Macaw-Story-Costa-National/dp...

Page 75: "Scientists estimate it takes from five to ten thousand years to completely reconstruct a virgin rainforest."

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